THE International Labour Organization (ILO) has launched the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, to encourage legislative and practical actions to eradicate the practice worldwide.

Although child labour has decreased by 38% over the last decade, one-in-10 children or 152 million worldwide, are still caught up, the ILO said.

"There is no place for child labour in society," said Mr Guy Ryder, Director-General of the ILO. "It robs children of their future and keeps families in poverty."

The International Year was unanimously adopted in a UN General Assembly resolution in 2019 to urge governments to achieve Target 8.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 to end child labour in all its forms.

The ILO noted uneven progress across regions with some 72 million children working in Africa, which account for almost half of the world's total. This is followed by Asia and the Pacific, home to 62 million child labourers.

It highlighted that 70% of these children work in agriculture - mainly in subsistence and commercial farming and livestock herding - and almost half in occupations or situations considered hazardous to their health and lives.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has considerably exacerbated the situation, the organisation noted. It has rendered everyone more vulnerable to exploitation, compounding poverty within defenceless populations, with school closures pushing millions more into the labour market, so they can contribute to the family income.

"With COVID-19 threatening to reverse years of progress, we need to deliver on promises now more than ever," said the ILO chief as he called for joint and decisive action to reverse the trend.

In collaboration with the Alliance 8.7 global partnership, the ILO kickstarted a 12-month campaign to raise awareness of child labour.

The joint initiative encourages regional, national and organizational stakeholders and individuals to identify concrete actions that they will take by December 2021, to help end child labour.

The International Year will prepare the ground for the V Global Conference on Child Labour (VGC) that will take place in South Africa in 2022, where stakeholders will share experiences and make additional commitments towards ending child labour in all its forms by 2025, and forced labour, human trafficking and modern slavery by 2030.